


Winter

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Heartbreak, Overhearing Sex, Please Don't Hate Me, Please Don't Kill Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Barba overhears Benson and Stone in a compromising position. Hearts are broken. Not entirely a downer, but … a downer with a little room for hope. I understand completely if after reading this you want to kiss me on the forehead and leave me standing out in the freezing cold crying while you walk away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here, this needs an epigraph: 
> 
> "Something has been broken and it feels permanent" - Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, "Beachcombing"

Midwinter in New York City is nothing like the holiday-lit magic of early winter: by February, all the Christmas lights are gone, graying remnants of snow banks on street corners refuse to melt, the flu’s punching at least half the city in the chest, and wind tunnels formed by high-rise buildings threaten to rip your face off at every turn. 

On a Friday evening exactly one year and one day after he resigned, Rafael Barba found himself standing in Jack McCoy’s office, briefcase dropped unceremoniously onto a chair in front of his former boss’s desk.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” McCoy said.

“No,” Barba answered, the word clipped and harsh, “they’re not. Not yet.”

“Your nomination to the bench tells me —”

“Jack,” he said, “this is neither the time nor the place for praise.”

Despite his cold demeanor, Barba was hopeful about his pending judicial appointment to a family court division in Albany. The state senate had, surprisingly, given him reason to be optimistic: they’d just completed a three-week investigation into the Householder case, which they’d decided was an out-of-character fluke on Barba’s generally upstanding 21-year record. Now they were looking into the incident in Brooklyn from years ago when he gave a strung-out witness a “loan” and then continued to help her mother and daughter after the witness died of an overdose the next day. By early spring, he’d know if the appointment went through.

 _You’ll never be a judge now_ , his mother had told him before his trial began.

 _I have to fix this_ , he remembered Liv saying.

He’d wanted Liv to be his best friend, his — something inarticulable at the moment — not his mother, not his superhero.

“So what do you need?” McCoy asked.

“There’s a file on the Abreu family — paper, no electronic version — that I brought over with me from Brooklyn and may have left in a cabinet in my former office. I need to make sure I’m disclosing everything to the state senate and the bar association. I need to be an open book.”

McCoy looked at his watch. “Peter’s probably still in his office.”

“After 7? I didn’t take him for —”

“There’s a major case on his desk where the investigating detective’s fiancé may have had a hand in covering up the crime.”

Barba closed his eyes. “Word got around,” he told McCoy. He’d caught wind of Detective Rollins’ latest plight while he was working for a firm upstate that represented defendants and minors in family court. He’d resisted checking in with her to see if she needed representation, if she planned to sue for custody.

He’d resisted checking in with Liv, too.

If he became a judge, if the state senate and bar association forgave him all his sins, he’d make it up to her, he promised himself.

He knew he’d left her in the same way other friends and lovers had left her. He _knew_. But just as she was better off without the exhaustion of a Stabler or Cassidy in her life, she was, he believed, better off without a Barba weighing heavy on her heart too. 

“I’ll go check,” Barba said.

“If he’s not there, let me know what you need and I’ll have it couriered to you by Monday.”

Barba nodded, thanked the man who’d charged him with murder, and headed for the elevators. 

The third floor was silent except for a security guard hanging around near the elevator bank. All the offices were dark. Barba walked to the end of the hallway, to the vestibule that constituted the outer office of the dedicated SVU ADA. He saw Carmen’s desk. Still Carmen’s desk. The best administrative assistant he’d ever had now worked for Stone.

A soft yellow light glowed through the otherwise-opaque frosted window on the office door. And then Barba’s ears registered a soft rhythmic grunting echoing from inside.

Well then.

He’d heard rumors about his successor.

His beloved successor, who’d recklessly pursued a _federal_ case even as his sister’s life was threatened, quite credibly in fact, who was so _broken_ about getting his sister killed that he was having sex in his office at 7:30 on a Friday night.

“Lower,” he heard a woman’s voice whisper, “lower. You’re not even anywhere near —”

Barba laughed to himself at the level of frustration in the woman’s voice as he walked past Carmen’s desk, prepared to tell McCoy that Stone was nowhere to be found. 

Stone let out a less rhythmic “oh — oh — yes” that was loud enough to prompt a “Peter, shut up, there’s still security out there” from his partner.

Barba felt pins and needles in his chest and a lump in his throat. 

He recognized the woman’s voice.

“Let’s get back to work,” she said.

“But you didn’t —”

“It’s fine. We were here to work anyway.”

“Maybe if we went to my place —”

“I can’t leave Noah with Lucy overnight for anything other than police business. You know better than to ask.”

“I could stay over one Saturday after Little League.”

Why was he still eavesdropping? If he heard another word, he was going to throw up on his designer wingtips. 

“I told you,” she said, “I’m not ready for that.”

Barba was halfway down the hall, wondering if he should break into a run, when he heard a phone ring. The loud clang startled him out of his stupor, out of the sobs and curses threatening his throat.

“Rafa,” he heard behind him. 

He hung his head before he turned around. Why hadn’t she just sent Stone out, and then snuck away before Barba returned? She was a police lieutenant, she should know —

Her shaky half-smile and glistening eyes told him that the timing of McCoy’s call had clued her in to the fact that Barba had already gone to knock on Stone’s door, that he’d overheard at least part of their encounter.

She was already in her coat and scarf. “McCoy said you needed a file,” she said, her voice cracking, his heart shattering. 

“I can have Stone send it to me on Monday. I apologize for interrupting your … meeting.”

“Go look for your file, please. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.” Her expression was sour. He’d done that to her. He was a selfish asshole.

Or, he was a selfish asshole for believing he’d done that to her. Either way.

“Go, Rafa. McCoy said —”

“Yes,” he said, answering an unasked question.

Benson headed for the elevator and Barba headed to Stone’s office. He found Stone standing near the faux fireplace, arms crossed uncomfortably, his suit jacket on top of his desk and his tie open beneath his collar. 

Barba dropped his briefcase on the floor. “I’m looking for a file I left here and then I’m gone for good,” he promised.

“There’s a drawer,” Stone said, crossing over to the file cabinet and knocking on hollow metal. “Right half is everything you left here. Figured it was safer in the office.”

Barba opened the drawer, found the file he was looking for, and tucked it into his briefcase. “Thank you,” he said to the man who’d prosecuted him to tears a year ago.

He was surprised when he found Benson waiting for him in the rotunda. She sat on a bench, back pressed to the wall behind her, staring straight ahead.

But his heart sank to his toes when it dawned on him that he wasn’t the one she was waiting for.

He walked up to her. “I’m sorry about the terms I left on last year. You have every right to never forgive me and move on with your life.”

“You want real forgiveness, you’ve got to get that from Noah,” she said with a breathless sarcasm. “I know what it’s like to have someone do a complete 180 on me and suddenly walk out of my life. He doesn’t.”

What about his grandmother? Barba wondered, and then realized he was comparing himself to Sheila Porter, whatever that meant. 

He placed a hand on Benson’s shoulder. She didn’t shoo him away. Instead, she reached her left arm across her collarbone so she could cover his hand with hers.

“I heard you’re going to be a judge,” she said, trying to smile.

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You made it through the state senate’s investigation into the Householder case.”

“They contacted you about that?”

“Yes. Peter too.”

“They’re looking into the Abreu incident now. I’ll know by March or April whether —”

“You will be,” she said.

He removed his hand from her shoulder and sat beside her on the bench. His eyes were heavy, his muscles taxed by heartbreak as he looked over at the woman who he’d been, retrospectively, in love with for years.

And what a selfish asshole he was to only experience the intensity of that love when she was with someone else.

Or maybe he’d always experienced that intensity but had been frostbitten with fear of conflicts of interest and lost jobs and failed friendships. 

He heard footsteps on the stairs behind them and Stone asking, “You ready?”

“Yes. One minute. I’ll meet you outside,” Benson said. Barba could have sworn he heard tears in her voice. But, he imagined as she stood to join Stone, she was going to follow the sunk cost of this particular mistake as far down the road as she could. 

“What is he, twenty years younger than you?” Barba muttered.

Benson lightly smacked him across the lapels of his coat. “More like fifteen.”

“Liv.”

“Don’t say it.” Her words were thick with irony.

He pressed his forehead to hers, pursing his lips into a half-smile, closing his eyes. He was sure her eyes were closed too, and his hands came up to hold her head, to gently swipe his thumbs back and forth across her temples.

“I have to go,” she said, not moving.

“I know.” 

“Call me when you’re appointed. I want to be there for your swearing-in.”

“It’s all the way up in Albany.”

“I’ll make the drive. I want to be there.”

“Your boyfriend won’t be comfortable with that.”

“Rafa,” she warned.

Their heads were still pressed together. His hands were still in her hair.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

She nodded, sniffling back the tears she certainly wasn’t going to let herself cry out here in the rotunda. Finally pulling away, she walked out the front door of the courthouse, not looking back at Barba.

Outside, flurries were falling, promising to cover up and improve the aesthetics of the gray snowbanks along the sidewalk. Before he descended the steps to the subway, Barba stopped for a second to look up at the starless sky over Manhattan, a little bit of hope sounding in his broken heart, just a little.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little addition about trains that are always delayed. :-)

The Amtrak waiting area at Penn Station was quiet, the rows of chairs mostly empty, save for five or six travelers heading north of the city. Outside, an inch of snow had already coated the sidewalks. The snow and the winds were heavier south and west of the city, which was why Barba’s train had not yet arrived. 

He was supposed to leave for Albany at 8:30. When he got to Penn Station, the board said his train wasn’t coming until 9:30 on account of the weather. He bought himself a coffee — no dinner, not even a snack, since he had no appetite after what he’d accidentally overheard in Stone’s office — and sat in the far corner of the waiting area, willing himself not to slump. 

At 9:15, the board said his train wasn’t coming until 9:45.

At 9:30, the numbers changed to 9:50. 

Barba pursed his lips. He was furious at the delay, but his fury turned into a lump in his throat and a dull ache behind his eyes. What a fool I am, he thought, an attorney in his late forties about to cry over a train delay.

About to cry over the first woman he’d fallen in love with in 25 years. 

And the gulf he’d created between them when he left abruptly, foolishly, after he was found not guilty. 

At 9:45, the board promised him and his fellow travelers that the train would arrive at 10pm. “Train’s not even in Newark yet,” a woman looking at her phone complained. “They’re full of shit. We won’t be out of here until 11, I’m sure.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Barba said. “I’ll get us all refunds.”

She laughed. “Let’s just hope the train doesn’t get stuck on the bridge on the way in. Otherwise we’re all screwed.”

Barba’s stomach burned with an emptiness that it wasn’t used to. Just as he was considering pretzels, he saw a familiar face at the podium up front. 

“Ticketed passengers only,” the attendant said.

Benson showed the attendant her badge. The attendant waved her through.

There were still heavy white flakes on Benson’s dark coat, in hair. They melted as she sat beside Barba.

He didn’t know what to say. When he smiled sadly at her, he felt his eyes well up, which was exactly what he didn’t want, to let her in on how hurt he was.

“Rafa,” she said, biting her lower lip.

“What are you doing trudging around Midtown in a snowstorm?” 

“I saw your train hadn’t left yet.”

He sat up, turning as far as he could to face her. “Whatever happened, happened. You don’t need to go out of your way to —”

“To apologize to you for having sex with my fifteen-years-younger ADA in what used to be your office?”

“None of that necessitates an apology.”

“It’s only been going on for about a month. We were both in bad shape.”

“Liv. I don’t need details or excuses.”

“Okay,” she said, stretching her arm towards him so that her hand covered his. “I am sorry, though.”

Barba shook his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” 

“Peter and I had a talk just now, at my place, about how what we’re doing is probably a bad idea.”

“I told you, I don’t need details.”

“Empire Train arriving in 5 minutes,” a muffled voice announced over the loudspeaker. 

“That’s me,” Barba told Benson. He slid forward in his chair and started to stand. “I’ll call you when I hear about the judicial appointment.”

“Rafa, wait.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Is there anything —”

“No.” They were standing now, together, facing each other, him clutching his briefcase. “I’ll call you.”

She reached out, pat his back, and drew him into a hug. “I miss you,” she said, and now she was crying, and so was he.

He kissed the side of her head, his nose and lips in her hair. “My train’s here,” he reminded her. “But I’ll call you.”

“When they tell you you’re going to be a judge,” she said, a broad, beautiful smile on her face, almost as if she was proud of him in spite of everything, in spite of the events of that evening, in spite of the dust that had settled into the space he’d dug between them when he walked away a year and a day ago. 

“Yes.” He was already heading for the steps that would take him down to the train platform. “We’ll hope for the best.”

“When you’re sworn in, remember,” she called after him, “I want to be there.”


End file.
